Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., coughs as she conducts a roundtable discussion at the Yale Child Study Center in New Haven, Conn., Monday, February 4, 2008. (Photo: huanqiu.com)
Wondering the innermost details of Hillary Clinton's time as first lady in the White House? The US National Archives on Wednesday released 11,000 pages of documents detailing her day-to-day routine throughout eight years of Bill Clinton's presidency.
The quest for public disclosure of the schedules has attracted close attention throughout the presidential campaign, since Hillary has spoken extensively of her "35 years of experience" in public life, saying she learnt how to achieve success in Washington from her early mistakes.
The released documents reveal her to have been hard at work on health care, education, international development, women's rights and democracy.
They reveal Hillary got to work on health care reform within days of her arrival at the White House as first lady in 1993.
Almost from the moment she arrived in the White House on January 23, 1993, only three days after her husband's inauguration, she was calling meetings on her ultimately doomed initiative on health reform.
The documents cover nearly 2,900 days. An additional 27 days will be posted in the near future, the archives said.
According to the archives, 4,746 of the schedules have redactions, information removed before being released, that largely relate to privacy concerns including Social Security and telephone numbers and home addresses.
"Arranged chronologically, these records document in detail the activities of the first lady, including meetings, trips, speaking engagements and social activities for the eight years of the Clinton administration," the archives said.
The papers show Hillary had no public schedule on the day independent counsel Kenneth Starr was appointed to investigate Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, or on the day he was deposed in the case.
On the day the affair began, Hillary had a private meeting and a meet-and-greet with then-Vice-President Al Gore and Nobel Prize winners. She kept up a busy schedule as the affair spiraled into impeachment.
During the week in January 1998 when the Lewinsky controversy exploded, she was at Bill's side at an event where he angrily rejected the reports.
In the following days, she attended his State of the Union address and chose flowers for a black-tie dinner to celebrate a "Guns Aren't Cool" awards event.
(Xinhua News Agency March 20, 2008)
